Page 94 of Mate of a Monster

My heart hammers against my ribs.

“Now,” the Nightkin whispers, “this is the part you’re not gonna like.”

“What?” I whisper back to the Nightkin.

Legend’s stare sharpens.

I gulp.

“This is the part he breaks.”

Arabella crumbles.

Her knees buckle as a raw sound tears from her throat, half sob, half moan, bouncing off the dais walls. The Argent light that always clings to her skin flickers and dies, leaving her pale and gasping in its absence.

Silence spreads outward from her in a wave, the chaos around us stuttering to a halt. Every head turns toward the woman who demanded my execution, who spoke of divine right and proper bonds, now reduced to a shuddering mess of need on the marble floor.

Her fingers claw at the stone. Her spine arches, mouth opening on another sound—this one is pure desperation.

“Legend.” His name breaks on her tongue.

He doesn’t move.

He stands frozen above her, his face a war I can read in every twitch of his jaw and every flutter of his pulse. Confusion. Because he’s watching something he should care about, something he should feel, and there’s nothing there but hollow habit.

“There it is,” the Nightkin whispers, satisfaction thick in my blood. “Watch him break.”

“How?”

“We are strong. Hellpet,” he reminds me. “Don’t think. Demand what is yours. Fate waits to answer your cries.”

“I don’t cry.”

“Do it, mate. He is yours, is he not?”

My power hits Legend before I even intend it.

It slams into his chest like a fist made of everything I am—everything I’ve become since he ripped our bond apart and left me bleeding on foreign soil. His shoulders jerk back, hands rising slightly, like he’s trying to catch something invisible, and black smoke pours from his skin without his permission.

Fuck you. I hate you and her and how could you—

“Hellpet. Control yourself.”

The tendrils drift toward me through the wreckage. They curl through the air like fingers across the space between us like they know exactly where they belong.

The walls crack.

Sound rips through the hall, sharp and violent, and fissures spider up the pale surface toward the ceiling. Gifted scream and run, the beast allowing them to break free of the calm he put them under, as pieces crumble and fall, shattering on marble. Still the smoke keeps reaching for me.

Legend’s wide shoulders shake.

His magic tears apart at the seams because it can’t decide which direction to go. Toward Arabella, out of desperate habit and whatever fake bond Creed shoved into his chest. Or toward me, because every cell in his body recognizes what I am even if his conscious mind has been ripped from fate’s hands herself.

“Having trouble, my king?” My lip twitches.

And there it is—something in his eyes cracks open, something he’s been fighting since the moment I crashed through that portal. Maybe even before then.

He goes to speak when Arabella whimpers behind him. Her hand reaches for his ankle, fingers brushing against his boot, and he flinches like her touch burns.